Overwatch: Blizzard takes a tough stance against toxic players

The widely acclaimed Overwatch from World of Warcraft developer Blizzard is a relatively child-friendly game, which is reflected in the very strict in-game chat filter. Still, with some creativity you can bypass the filters and scold a ‘bad’ player. Blizzard, on the other hand, actively searches for these ‘toxic’ players.

In the Developer Update below, director Jeff Kaplan says he is very satisfied with the already implemented report function. More and more toxic players are being reported and tapped or not. In Competitive mode alone, 17 percent fewer word changes were recorded after the introduction of the report function.

But the American developer is not yet satisfied with the decline of nearly 20 percent, because the company actively takes on the task of tackling toxic players. For example, they explore YouTube in search of incidents of extreme toxicity, after which they track down the involved players and whether or not they warn, mutate, banish or punish them in any other way.

Although this action seems a bit extreme at first, the toxicity in Overwatch’s competitive mode is very high, which drastically reduces gaming enjoyment – even for a lifelong online gamer with a thick skin like me. It became so bad that Kaplan itself called on players to be a little friendlier, partly because it takes countless precious hours to counteract toxicity.

New hero
In addition, fans are getting excited for the upcoming new hero, now called Hero 27. Although there are some small references in Overwatch ‘latest map Blizzard World to the new hero, little is known.

On the other hand, there are rumors that this is a new meta-changing defensive hero. So far the game has been enriched with two new Support characters (Ana and Moira), two new Offence characters (Doomfist and Sombra) and a new Tank (Orisa). In addition, it could just become a new Defense hero.

If so, many players hope for a character that can do something about the mobility of many offensive hero’s. Although Orisa with her secondary attack may be a bit bothered by movement of fast characters, it is not enough as far as fans are concerned. It is possible that the new defensive hero will play a more passive role in combination with other defense hero’s.